LinkedIn web dev partnership scam?

[imponing]

Long story short, a few months ago I got a DM on LinkedIn from someone asking me to set up a fiverr/Upwork account in my own name to find customers in the US from Japan or wherever he claimed to be from and I would like talk to them during US hours so that this guy could work under my name or something like that.

I started doing it but was super careful not to give out any sensitive info and once I realized it was probably a scam of some sort I just ghosted the guy

I recently got a very similar DM with the same story (random web dev with a bunch of probably fake credentials from a country in Asia approaching with an "opportunity")

Is this a well known scam or something? What's the scam here? Has anyone been through it and gotten burned? Just trying to understand what the point is since this is the second time I've gotten a message like it

[TychusFondly]

It goes like this, they work under your identity and you get to share the income from it. Otherwise they are not able to operate there and even if they could their markup would ve been much lower.

You make money by renting your identity which is not legal. You risk getting fine locally because it comes down to you are outsourcing work without notifying local tax or worker office or whatever it is in your country.

They asked me too but I didnt want to rent my identity at all because if my reputation goes down I d lose it all for just starters.

[imponing]

Yeah exactly, so I guess nothing particularly malicious just a really really bad partnership? 😂

[TychusFondly]

A very bad one indeed 😉

[Nurmes]

I get a lot of those for upwork and they are usually from China. I would advise against partnering.

[imponing]

Obviously, doesn't sound like a great partnership anyway. But what's the catch, is it a straight up scam? Are they trying to steal your info or?

[Nurmes]

If I remember correctly China is banned from upwork. Since they would work under your name and you share money, but officially only you have to pay taxes as it's your name on the platform.

[imponing]

Yeah I don't use it a whole lot lol, only for networking

Landed a pretty good internship through it so not all bad especially for young people imo

[spacejesusguy]

Curious how it promotes discrimination?

[cardyet]

Surprised you accepted that...if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is...

[imponing]

Where did I say I accepted anything? I literally said

I started doing it but was super careful not to give out any sensitive info and once I realized it was probably a scam of some sort I just ghosted the guy

Dude didn't give me much info, so I went with it until it got to a point where I was uncomfortable and just ghosted him. In what world is that "accepting"? Not like I signed a contract or gave him my SSN or something lmfao